POWAY: 43 city employees made more than $100K last fiscal year

More than half of city employees received less than $50K

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Thirty-five Poway city employees earned more than the city's
median household income in the fiscal year that ended June 30, with
43 making more than $100,000, salary information the city released
last week shows.

The median household income in Poway was $105,420 in 2009,
according to census figures posted on the San Diego Association of
Government's website.

Assistant City Manager Tina White said Wednesday that salaries
are based on a classification and compensation study Poway did two
years ago and on the City Council's direction to set pay for 10 or
so "benchmark" jobs near the bottom of the upper one-third of
salaries for employees at all 18 San Diego County cities.

"We go out and actually poll all of the other cities in San
Diego County to see where our salaries (for those positions) fall
within the range of other cities," she said, citing firefighter and
accountants as examples of benchmark positions.

Penny Riley, who was assistant city manager until she was
promoted to manager in January, topped the salary list with total
compensation of $220,698.

Former City Manager Rod Gould, who left in December to take over
as the city of Santa Monica's top employee, made $163,185, the
records show.

The 41 other city employees who earned more than $100,000 in
total compensation were management personnel and firefighters whose
pay was as high as $166,172.

More than half of the city's employees made less than $50,000,
and 115 earned less than $20,000.

City officials released the salary information for July 1, 2009,
through June 30, 2010, in response to a state Public Records Act
request by the North County Times.

The information shows how much each city employee received for
regular pay, overtime pay, vacation and other paid leave, unused
leave that was cashed out, auto and cell phone allowances, and
deferred compensation, or contributions the city made to
post-retirement medical accounts for the employees.

The records list 372 people who worked for the city at some
point during 2009-10.

White said the city actually has 229 full-time employees and
about 30 part-timers.

The 2009-10 list includes 113 more employees, she said, because
it includes workers who retired, quit or held short, seasonal
positions, including Gould, summer camp counselors and Poway Center
for the Performing Arts employees hired for specific events.

Based on White's 259-employee figure, those whose compensation
topped $100,000 account for 16.6 percent of the city's staff.

The list includes five city department directors who received
between $139,762 and $166,172.

A city engineer, the city clerk, a senior traffic engineer and
several assistant department directors and department managers also
topped $100,000, with total compensation as high as $134,014.

Three division chiefs for the city's Fire Department earned
slightly more than $100,000 in base pay, compared with $76,995 or
less for other firefighters.

Overtime pay boosted most city firefighters' compensation by
$20,000 to $30,000.

In one case, overtime accounted for $43,847 of one firefighter's
pay, or 38 percent of his overall compensation of $116,306.

White said the fire department relied heavily on overtime pay to
help maintain staffing levels that were necessary to provide
sufficient fire protection.

She said that occasionally meant calling in off-duty
firefighters to work overtime to cover for sick co-workers or to
fill other staffing gaps.

"But (you have to) consider that to hire on another employee
requires not only a salary, but also the cost of a pension and the
cost of providing health insurance," White said. "Then you have the
other things that go along with it --- employee taxes and workers'
comp. ... It's oftentimes still more effective to pay employees
overtime instead of hiring another body."

Although other city employees earned overtime, the amounts
typically were much lower than for firefighters.

Some city workers increased their total compensation by cashing
out vacation and other leave time they did not use, providing a
windfall in a handful of cases in which the extra money accounted
for more than a third of an individual's compensation.

White said each of those cases involved someone who quit or
retired, meaning the employee was paid for any unused vacation and
leave time.

City employees who cashed out smaller amounts were covered by
labor agreements that either gave them the right to sell back some
of their vacation time or required the city to automatically
reimburse high-level managers who don't use all the executive leave
time they're entitled to because they're not allowed to earn
overtime, White said.